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Ruby, a novel by East Texas native Cynthia Bond, has been selected by Oprah Winfrey as her next book club pick.

The novel tells the story of a woman fighting for survival in a world that seems determined to destroy her.” In a review last year, Dallas Morning News contributor Rosalyn Story said, “Bond has created a heroine worthy of the great female protagonists of Toni Morrison (Sula, The Bluest Eye’s Pecola Breedlove, Song of Solomon’s Hagar) and Zora Neale Hurston (Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God). All are strong women with a bruised softness at the core, searching for the healing salve of love.”

Bond grew up close to the East Texas town of Liberty, where her book is set. She now lives in Los Angeles.

The Associated Press reports that Winfrey also has acquired film and television rights for Ruby through her Harpo Films. Her interview with Bond will appear in the March issue of O magazine, which comes out Feb. 17.

“Oprah’s Book Club 2.0,” which launched in 2012, focuses on online promotion, through her own website and through social media. The hardcover currently has 20,000 copies in print, publisher Hogarth told AP. TA printing of 250,000 copies was planned for today’s paperback release.

More from the AP:

Bond’s novel is Winfrey’s first choice in just over a year, when she selected Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings. Fans may wish she announced picks more often, but Winfrey’s success and staying power is in part because of her reluctance to recommend a book until she finds one that excites her.

When she started her first club, in 1996, she would make several choices a year. But by 2002 she felt she had put too much pressure on herself to find new works and suspended her club. Winfrey ended the hiatus a year later, only after she came upon a book she was compelled to talk about, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

“‘I thought, ‘Gee, I wish I had a book club so I could tell everybody about it and do it without pressure,“’ she said.

Bond studied journalism at Northwestern University and lived for years in New York, where she acted with the Negro Ensemble Company. During a recent telephone interview, she said that she worked on the novel for more than a decade and that it will likely be the first of a trilogy.

She had written 900 pages for Ruby but decided to separate it into three books after her mother, then her agent, suggested it.

Ruby draws upon stories Bond has heard while working with at-risk youth in Los Angeles, and was also inspired by a horrifying event in her family’s history. In the 1930s, Bond’s aunt was shot repeatedly by the sheriff and his deputies, all rumored to be members of the Ku Klux Klan, because she had been involved with a white man. Her body was dumped in a sack and thrown onto her grandfather’s porch. “This has impacted our family so much and was the base from where the story [of Ruby] started,” Bond said.

In praising the book, Winfrey also compared it to works by Morrison and Hurston, authors that the 53-year-old Bond cites as influences. She and Winfrey have had much to say to other. Bond, like Winfrey, has known difficult, despairing times. She was sexually and physically abused as a child and says writing helped her cope with near-suicidal depression.

They also share a connection to Maya Angelou, who died last year. Bond is the daughter of a literature and theater professor and met Angelou as a child. Winfrey knew Angelou for decades and often spoke of the poet as a mentor and mother figure.

“If Maya had been alive I would have called her before I finished thisand said, ‘Oh, my God, you’ve got to read this book and finish it with me,“’ Winfrey said.

When the news broke about Harper Lee’s forthcoming novel, the reaction was what you might expect: Ecstasy from the tens of millions of fans of one of the most beloved American novels of the past century.

Equally memorable: The total silence when she showed images of her dying mother from the end of Can’t We Talk. Which is, for the record, a profound and moving piece of art.

In between, Chast worked in abundant bits of biography, from the fears instilled by her parents (don’t expect her to sit on the ground at your next picnic — she wouldn’t want to risk getting a cold in her kidneys) to her failed efforts to draw horses worthy of submission to Highlights magazine (they were terrible horses — but great cartoons, she realized) to the biases she had to overcome at art school (trying to make people laugh was not hip) to the many parallels between her tastes and those of her legendary predecessor Charles Addams (both collected old magazine ads for coffins, enjoyed old postcards of grim events and had a thing for making art out of eggs.)

Overall — the evening was a perfect blend of funny, smart and poignant. But especially funny. Catch her if you ever get the chance. Just get there early — you wouldn’t want to have to sit on the ground.

Here’s a war anniversary that isn’t getting all that much press: Fifty years ago the Vietnam War became Americanized, as the Johnson Administration doubled down on U.S. commitment to what would become a quagmire. Fredrik Logevall knows something about the subject: He won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in history for his book Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. The book is considered one of the best on the war, particularly its early years, when it was the French Indochina War, and the transition to full U.S. commitment. Tuesday nigt he shared some of his insights as part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts & Letters Live series, co-presented with the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth and SMU’s Center for Presidential History.

Among his major points:

The U.S. was committed to the conflict well before we entered it. Or, as Logevall put it Tuesday, “The Americans were much more committed to the French war than the French were themselves.”

The escalation of the war was largely the result of American permissiveness, or “the disinclination to ask tough questions.” Logevall drew a direct parallel with the build-up to the most recent Iraq War.

Both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were wary of being labeled soft on Communism in the wake of the McCarthy era. This wariness made both presidents reluctant to scale back American commitment to the war.

If you missed Logevall on Tuesday he’ll be back 6 p.m. Wednesday for another talk at McCord Auditorium on the SMU campus. That one is free.

As noted earlier, Dallas writer Bryan Woolley died last week. Memorial services were held last night. Stories were shared. It’s possible that some fine whiskey was consumed.

As editor of the books pages, I mourn the loss of of a gifted critic. (You can read his recent pieces on Marilynne Robinson, Sherlock Homes-related fiction and Shakespeare for evidence.) As his onetime editor when he was on the features staff, I mourn the loss of a masterful writer. (Links to some samples were posted with his obituary.) And, as I said, I will miss his friendship.

Taylor perfectly describes Bryan “a big shambling man, with long unkempt hair, glasses and a scraggly short beard. He looked like a perpetually inquisitive bear, and he had the air of eternal innocence. Unlike many writers, he was modest, sweet-natured and completely inept at self-promotion,which is probably why his books are not better-known.”

So for the people who could not be with us last night — and for those who have yet to discover his writing — I’m posting the remarks I prepared about him. Please feel free to leave your own comments below, or send me a link to something, and I will add it.

***

I want to open with some words from Isabel [Nathaniel, his wife.] As you probably know, she is in New York and could not travel here. She told me, “If I were there I would stand up and speak extemporaneously. My grief and my love would be in my voice.” And she asked me to read this poem.

“The Visitant” from The Beholder: A Tale which was published in Southwest Review.

The Visitant

On the west deck

my husband sat reading, reading

The Library of America,

having brought volumes 82 and 83

being H. James, Complete Stories.

Eased wholly into his chair, slipped

wholly into a story, he looked up

only if signaled by an arriving bird:

crow, titmouse, woodpecker, wren

and at a certain hour, a silent blue heron

which never was seen flying in

but was suddenly there

down on the dock, motionless, big,

a statue of a bird, its blue at dusk

the grey of headstones, its head

lain on its shoulder, a gold-dagger bill

and (through binoculars) a gold eye.

“The heron is here,” my husband called.

Bryan’s life was worthy of an epic poem. It was monumental, even. But Isabel also told me that if she were speaking, “I would have to be funny, too, because Bryan enjoyed funny. Ted and Pat were funny when they talked to their father on the phone. In their great sadness now they are sure to still have a sense of humor.”

I can’t promise funny in my own words. But I did want to begin by retelling a joke that Bryan was fond of. One that might explain why it feels particularly precarious for me — his final editor at the News — to be standing up here, talking about him.

The joke involved a reporter and an editor being shipwrecked and washing ashore on a desert island. After wandering for a spell, they come across a pool of pure, sweet, fresh water. As the reporter prepares to drink, the editor steps up to the edge of the pool and starts to urinate. “What are you doing?!” cries the reporter.

The editor says, “I’m improving it.”

So let us be clear: Bryan was not an easy reporter to work with. He was brilliant. And had a monumental career. And he became a cherished friend. But he was not. Easy.

Here is how it would work with me. He would go off on an assignment — maybe across town and maybe across the state — and come back, and tell me about it. And I’d listen, ask a couple of questions because I liked hearing him talk, and I’d set a deadline a week or two away, and then he would go over to his cubicle and put on his headphones. And I would walk past him every day, and he’d be sitting there, listening to his recordings, usually not typing much. And this would go on for several days, and like a good editor I would ask him now and then, “How’s it going?” and he would say, “Fine.” Or maybe repeat what he had told me when he had gotten back from the trip. And I would walk on. And Tom Huang, my boss, would ask me how Bryan was doing and I would tell him, “Fine,” not really having any idea if things were fine. And this cycle — Bryan seeming to do very little, me wondering what was going on — would repeat itself until a day or two before the deadline, when I was certain that the following Sunday’s Texas Living cover was going to be a big blank space where his unwritten story should have gone, he would start typing. And the day after that, he would walk up to me and tell me the story was done. And it would be pretty much perfect.

At some point, he explained to me what he was doing when I thought he was just sitting there. He told me he was listening to his interviews and trying to decide where to begin his story. Once you figure that out, he said, the rest is easy.

So let me go back to the beginning of my own story with Bryan. My first exposure was from afar. I arrived in Dallas in 1992. I recall reading lots of stories about Texas icons: Cowboys. Longhorns. Rattlesnakes. Cowboys who wrangled longhorns. And rattlesnakes. Things that were always kind of dangerous. And it seemed to me that these stories always had the same name attached to them: Bryan Woolley. And I think that at that point he became to me the embodiment of all things grand and Texan. And kind of dangerous.

After I became his editor and got to know Bryan, of course, I realized he was not that dangerous. Most days. But he became even more of an icon. Over time, his own story came out in anecdotes. There was the time he watched them film Giant. There was the time he interviewed Louis Armstrong. The time he went to Harvard. The time he marched to Montgomery. The time he conspired to trick the mooching TV reporters at the senator’s press conference. And so on.

These are all epic tales, and you will find some in his books. I am hoping we will hear a few other legendary tales later tonight.

Of course, my favorite stories about him are a little more personal. The most revealing to me happened after we had been working together awhile. I had edited one of his pieces, maybe suggested a couple of small changes, and told him it was another great piece of work. And he looked genuinely relieved. And I think I acted surprised. And I might have said out loud, “why would a writer like you care about approval from a relative kid like me? It’s not like I have anything to teach you.”

And he explained — a writer, even one of his grand accomplishments, always needs to hear how he’s doing and always needs a sounding board to do his best work. Bryan was about 66 years old at this point. And after all his books and awards and successes — he still cared. He wanted to be good. He wanted each story to be memorable. And he was pushing himself as hard as when he had been a teenager stringing for the El Paso Times at 15 cents an inch.

He was, by the way, pushing himself to the end. The day before he died, we traded emails about what was going to be his next book review for me. Having just written for me about one of his favorite topics, Sherlock Holmes, was diving into two new volumes about another, Abraham Lincoln. We also talked about plans we had made to open this bottle of really excellent whiskey I had mysteriously received several years ago. “One great thing about good whiskey is that it doesn’t go bad,” would be his final words to me. And it’s possible I might be sharing that bottle with some of you here tonight.

But I want to close with some thoughts about Bryan, and Lincoln. Lincoln himself had a Roman sort of idea about eternity, one that Bryan once told me resonated with him. The Romans believed that your soul would live as long as your great deeds were remembered. This is why they were so big on monuments. Bryan might have thought of his books as his monuments, and it is fitting and proper that we remember him for this.

But in the days since he died, I’ve heard so many people talk about things that had nothing to do with his writing. They remember his kindness. Simple ways he made them smile. For one former co-worker, it was the teapot he bought her when he learned she loved tea. Another remembered the joy he took in talking about his granddaughters, and the pride he took in his sons. Another remembered the way he made him laugh. I think of the way he encouraged me, when I was feeling overwhelmed at my new job as books editor. He told me tale about how he had once felt out of his league at Harvard, and the way a mighty professor had told him, “You, too, are a scholar.” It’s a story I’ve spread to people who will never know Bryan, and we are grateful to him for it.

I’ve realized — these acts of kindness, of humility, of joy, of love — these are the monuments by which we will remember him. These are the things that will dwell with us forever. These are the things that should inspire us to push ourselves, and work, and learn, and challenge ourselves right up to our very last moments.

Until that time, we shall miss him. But his soul will surely be smiling.

Staff writer Joy Tipping and I spent the lunch hour talking books with esteemed book-lover Krys Boyd of KERA-FM (90.1)’s Think. A podcast will be posted there later, for those who like to mock print journalists appearing on broadcast media.

Here’s a list of some of the titles we mentioned, with links to reviews and other stories that we published.

A new Judy Blume novel for adults will be released June 2, Knopf Doubleday said in a press release this morning.

"In the Unlikely Event," by Judy Blume

Blume has been discussing the novel for months; today’s release gives it a title, In the Unlikely Event, and this summary:

The novel … considers a startling backdrop: a series of passenger airline flights that crashed over a three-month period in 1951 and 1952 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where Blume grew up. “These events have lingered in my mind ever since,” says Blume. “It was a crazy time. We were witnessing things that were incomprehensible to us as teenagers. Was it sabotage? An alien invasion? No one knew, and people were understandably terrified.” The crashes resulted in the closing of Newark airport for nine months.

It will be her first novel for adults in more than 15 years, the release said.

Blume herself tweeted:

Pub date is June 2. Still polishing. Will be hard to say goodbye to these characters. #InTheUnlikelyEvent

Jan. 20 – Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam

Jan. 21 – Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect. (Read an interview with him here.)

Jan. 28 — Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

FEBRUARY

Feb. 2 – Texas Bound II: G.W. Bailey (Major Crimes, M*A*S*H), reads about a Texas chili contest and Constance Gold Parry, Gail Cronauer, and Tina Parker share stories about the death of a dog, the nursing of a whooping crane, and an essay by Sarah Bird.

Feb. 9 – Philipp Meyer(The Son) and singer/songwriter Grace Pettis

Feb. 18 – Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa

Feb. 20 – Lynsey Addario, It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War